18-03-2025
Former ER doctor recalls fear treating victims in 1995 Tokyo sarin attack
Recounting the sarin deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult 30 years ago, a former emergency room physician described the terror of having to treat large numbers of patients without knowing what happened to them in the very first stage of the incident.
Around 8 a.m. on March 20, 1995, Aum members released sarin in train cars on three subway lines in the Japanese capital during the morning rush hour, leaving 14 people dead and over 6,000 others injured.
At 8:16 a.m. that day, the Tokyo Fire Department informed St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo's Chuo Ward that an explosion had occurred on the subway system.
Just some 400 meters away from Tsukiji Station, the hospital was soon swamped with patients who arrived on foot, by ambulance or taxi. Many of them said they could not breathe or that their eyes hurt. Some were sent to the hospital in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest. About 640 victims of the sarin attack were treated at the hospital on the day.
Tetsu Okumura, 62, now an executive of the Japan Poison Information Center, was working as an emergency room physician at St. Luke's International Hospital at the time.
"I felt scared, like I was being dragged into a bottomless pit. I felt everything in front of me turn pitch black," he said.
The hospital decided to suspend its regular medical care for the day to concentrate on treating people affected by the attack.
Okumura said he can never forget the face of a female patient who frantically asked him: "Am I all right? Am I going to die?" All he said he could do for her was to reply: "You'll be all right. Don't worry."
Although the hospital was told that the patients had been caught up in an explosion, they did not have burns or any other external wounds.
Instead, they had constricted pupils. Okumura felt something was wrong.
While Okumura and other staff were searching for the cause of the patients' symptoms, the hospital received information on sarin from Shinshu University Hospital doctors who treated victims of a sarin attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in June 1994, and from doctors hurriedly dispatched from Self-Defense Forces Central Hospital in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward.
Based on the information, Okumura gave his patients atropine sulfate to treat constricted pupils and 2-pyridine aldoxime methiodide, an antidote used for organophosphorus poisoning. Their conditions stabilized after the treatment.
"I let out a sigh of relief," he said.
Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department later announced that sarin was highly likely the cause of the symptoms. Okumura recalled that he felt angry at those who released the deadly gas.
St. Luke's International Hospital accepted a total of around 1,410 people during the first week of the subway attack. Of them, two died within a month. Some medical personnel suffered secondary injuries, while many attack victims experienced aftereffects.
"There are people who are still suffering today," Okumura said. "More support should be offered to victims."
